In recent years, with the extensive use and development of the Internet and the World Wide Web, the public has benefited in many ways. Amongst the primary beneficiaries of this Internet technology are those individuals who develop and/or use computer software. In particular, given the ready accessibility of a myriad of file resources located on the Internet, data required for locally executed applications can often be copied from a remote server rather than created locally.
Thus, for example, the extent of sharing of software development resources has increased. In particular, academic institutions and other community oriented technological groups frequently post the source code for commonly executed procedures and utilities on the web, thus saving members of the developer community time that would otherwise be required to write such code from scratch. At the time of the writing of this specification, for example, the C Interfaces and Implementation (CII) library at the Princeton University web site provides a set of Application Programming Interfaces (API's) useful in a wide variety of applications.
As a specific example, a hypothetical developer using the “C” programming language might want to use the CII “Atom” interface as part of the compiled source code for a “C” based application being developed. Fortunately for the developer, corresponding header and source files are located at:    http://www.cs.princeton.edu/software/cii/pkg/include/atom.h; and    http://www.cs.princeton.edu/software/cii/pkg/src/atom.c.Thus, the developer can access and compile such useful interfaces without expending extensive time and effort writing programming code already authored by others.
Unfortunately, while enormously helpful, the use of data files stored on the Internet as parameters in locally executed applications (e.g., the compiler application noted above) is associated with certain drawbacks. In particular, in order to use stored Internet files, the files must generally first be downloaded to a local storage medium. Such downloading generally requires a separate step manually initiated by the developer or other software user.
For example, returning to the example described above, since compilers typically do not accept URL specified files as parameters, in order to compile the source and header files atom.c and atom.h, the developer must first copy the files to a local directory (e.g., via an FTP protocol utility). Only when the source and header files have been downloaded can the developer compile the shared source code (e.g., by causing execution of a compile command such as “cl /FeMyApp.exe main.c atom.c”). Furthermore, to ensure the latest version of the CII Atom interface is used, the developer must complete such a download each time the interface is needed for a given compilation, resulting in significant inconvenience.
Thus, what is needed is a way for compilers and other locally executed software applications using data files stored on the Internet to access such files automatically and without creating extra work for the developers and users.